Many different sports and games employ physical goals, into which a puck or ball is shot, kicked, or thrown. Examples include lacrosse, soccer and hockey, to name a few. Traditionally, such goals have been installed as semi-permanent fixtures on a sports field or rink. Even if not fixed to the field, such goals typically are too heavy and/or unwieldy to truly be considered portable. Thus, traditional goals typically have been used only for formal sporting events. For more informal events, nontraditional goals, such as two pylons, have been used to form a makeshift goal.
As sports have gained increasing popularity in our culture, and technology has advanced, many sports have evolved to allow a blending of formal and informal sporting events. Along with this evolution, a need developed for more flexible sporting equipment to accommodate these type of games. For example, street hockey is often played in a neighborhood street with a goal that can be carried (or dragged) into a player's garage when the game is over; likewise, many pickup soccer and lacrosse games are played in an open field with a smaller, more portable net that might be transportable with a pickup truck or sports utility vehicle.
As part of that evolution, some have developed “collapsible” or “portable” goals. Most typically, such goals fall into three camps: those that are portable but not easily collapsible, such as goals that can be completely disassembled for transportation but which are frustrating and time-consuming to reassemble; those that are collapsible but not easily portable, such as goals that can be quickly folded into a flat configuration but are still too large to be easily carried or transported in a normal automobile; and those that are collapsible and easily portable, such as goals that have a wire frame that twists into itself to be compact and flat but when set up for game use are flimsy and not truly in a traditional square or rectangular configuration.
Thus, there is a need for a sports goal that can be easily disassembled into a configuration that is easy to carry by hand and/or transport in a normal automobile while maintaining the necessary rigidity and form for traditional game use.